The quality of sleep of a person determines his/her physical and mental state throughout the day. That makes it particularly important to have a good sleep. A pillow is generally necessary for sleep, and the height and comfort of the pillow have great effects on the quality of sleep. In addition, for office workers who generally sit in an office all day, the pillow is expected to play an important role in the health of the cervical spine during periods of sleep.
Nowadays, a growing number of pillows have a health care function. For example, a “magnetic pillow” has been claimed to have a certain effect on treating neurasthenia, insomnia, headache and tinnitus. A pillow called “cervical pillow” is popular in the U.S. and Hong Kong, which claims to relax muscles of the neck, shoulders and skull base, to eliminate fatigue. In addition, a pillow called “massage pillow” has been developed in Japan, which claims to release energy like an oscillator to promote blood circulation and metabolism, and to have a role in improving sleep. In the history of mankind, there have been many different kinds of pillows and most of them use different contours and shapes or different interior padding materials to achieve different supporting effects. In fact, body figure data varies from person to person. Even within the same person, our skull width, neck width and shoulder width (including fatty tissue); and the special relationship between the back of our skull, cervical spine, and upper back muscle (with fatty tissue) may change from time to time, due to various factor such as age, weight, changes in body size and body/skeletal degeneration. Most, if not all, of the existing pillows belong to a passive device, and such passive pillow cannot satisfy the sleeping needs of all people or of the same person under various times and conditions.